The Clincher
by Ashe Romeo
Summary: James Sunderland stumbled into a well in the Toluca Prison Otherworld, the clumsy boy. Is it him, or is it getting harder to breathe down there?


**Disclaimer: **I own nothing, no one, I make $80 a week and I need to buy Dir en Grey tix, please don't sue me.

**A/N: **You know how in SH2, you have to bust through a brick wall in the Toluca Prison to get to a door, at the bottom of a well? Well, I found that to be a tad unrealistic and decided to heighten the tension of that particular scene, particularly because I'm claustrophobic and I couldn't even BEGIN to imagine how cramped it must have been in there. I wrote this a long, long time ago. I was looking through my stats and noticed this fic wasn't there, and consequently realized that I never put it up. So here it is. Heh.

**The Clincher**

It was a small sound that roused James Sunderland to consciousness, one that stirred all of his senses and pulsed through his bones with a gentle insistence that was not painful, but was enough to remind him that he was not falling anymore. That had been his first deduction, before he was even somewhat aware of his surroundings and when his mind was still in its foggy, dreamlike state.

He had jumped into a hole-brilliant move _that _had been-and had fallen. That was all that he remembered. Falling. No impact, nothing that would cause him to lose consciousness, just…_falling, _and then, blackness. It was this blackness that he saw when he opened his eyes, and momentarily unable to comprehend that wherever he had fallen to was devoid of light, he struggled, trying to make out _any _familiar shape at all.

Eventually, after he ceased opening and closing his eyes in the fruitless search for illumination, he became aware that the throbbing-the insistent, ceaseless _thuds _he heard and felt at the same time were not coming from somewhere _around _him, but within. His pulse. Rapidly, viciously, it pounded upon the drums of his ears, eagerly conveying that one message with fierce intensity. The fall hadn't killed him. He was alive. James would have smiled with relief, but didn't, as it was utterly inappropriate. Instead, he checked himself for injury. None. Nothing. Not only alive, but untouched as well.

Slowly, carefully, he rose first to his knees, then to his feet. No vertigo, no random explosions of colour to blur his already limited vision. He really _was _all right. He just needed to turn on his flashlight. It _was _very dark in there, after all.

But had he turned it off, when he'd gone down?

Frowning, James reached to his breast pocket, and found nothing. All right. It had fallen out. It had to have been on the ground somewhere.

He knelt, palms first, and felt nothing but moist concrete. _How _had he not hurt himself again? Trying not to think about that, he felt blindly around, moving slowly in a circle. It couldn't have gotten far. Flashlights just couldn't _disappear_ now, could they? No.

His fingertips brushed something, and he recoiled at the feel of it. It was not only moist, like the ground, but slimy, cold, hard. A wall. The wall. Of wherever he was.

Frowning, he rose to his feet, and flattened his palms against the surface in front of him. Not only slick, but-

_Curved?_

James took a step back, stretched out his arms, but didn't remove his hands. His back brushed something else, and he turned around, arms outstretched to touch—

Another wall.

The first tremor of real panic threatened to unnerve him, but he shook it off. Just two walls. There wouldn't be-

Arms spread wide, he rotated slowly. Three walls. Four walls. Four curved, slimy, brick walls.

No denying it now. He was trapped.

_Not trapped_shrieked the part of his mind that was trying its hardest to hold on to itself. _Not trapped. That just doesn't make sense, you're not-_

All right, perhaps he wasn't _trapped_, but wherever he was, wherever he had fallen, he was surrounded by walls. However, in contradiction, it wasn't galling to surmise that perhaps there was a _door _that he had missed. He had only just brushed the walls with his fingertips, nothing more.

Yes. A door.

Nodding to reassure himself, swiping his hand across his brow to wipe the sweat away, James flattened his palms against the wall closest to him. Cold, slimy brick. Nothing more. He curled his fingers and straightened them again against the rough surface, scraping his knuckles in the process. Another rotation, and still, no results.

All right. All right. He had fallen. He had no idea how _far _he had fallen, but still, he had fallen, he wasn't thinking clearly, wasn't looking hard enough, it was dark, he just needed some time to pull himself together. Yes.

Bringing his palms to his face so they pressed gently against his eyes, he slowly brought himself to a crouch, allowing the dark and the quiet to overwhelm him for the moment.

_Pull yourself together, James. Come on. Pull yourself together._

He bent his fingers, straightened them, spread them out, let them comb over the cool sweat on his forehead and through his hair. Again, he examined his head with his hands, this time more carefully, but also again, he found nothing. Not even so much as a scrape.

_Try again. Look harder. There **has **to be a way out._

James stood up, and after forcing himself to not think of the air as limited, he took a deep breath. Cracking the knuckles in both his hands, he raised his arms as high above his head as he could before putting his hands to the wall. The uneven, apathetic brick surface greeted him with uncomfortable familiarity.

Wiggling and bending his fingers liberally in search of some kind of crack or crevice, he brought his arms back down to chest level as slowly as he could. Nothing.

That same panic that had shaken him earlier returned with far more intensity than the last time. _Nothing here,_ the voice of Logic cackled in his mind, _there's nothing here, Jamsie boy, why are you even bothering?_

Mary had been claustrophobic, hadn't she? He blinked, taken aback by the randomness of the thought. _Claus-tro-phob-ia._ Fear of closed-in spaces, wasn't it? She never liked the kitchen because she said it was too small. Always complaining about something, the bitch-

What kind of thought was that? What the _fuck_ kind of a thought was that!

_Breathe. Breathe._

For some reason, he had to remind himself to breathe. He said the word in his head whenever he took in air, said it several times aloud now as he stood with his face in his palms, inhaling and exhaling, his heart hammering a mile a millisecond in his chest.

There wasn't a door here. There was no sense in looking for something that wasn't there, and the cold reality made him fall to his knees on the filthy ground, despaired.

"Mary…" he moaned, the word mangled and distorted by the tears in his throat. "Mary…Mary…Mary…_Marrrryyyyyy…"_

Oh, if only she could see him now. If only she could know how much he was suffering, just to find her. But it was her fault, wasn't it? Her fault he was in this stinking hole in the ground. That cold, knowing smile of hers. _James, honey, did something happen to you after we were separated-_

The bitch.

He didn't chastise himself this time, merely sat hunched in the darkness, wallowing in this anger, this hatred. These emotions…they were easier to deal with. The walls were closing in around him.

His whole body trembled with his sobs. He was afraid to cry the way he wanted to, afraid the air would run out. He was going to die. He was going to die here-

No.

No, he was _not. _He was _not_ going to die like this, crying like a baby at the bottom of some godforsaken well. He'd be damned if he gave up. It was easier to give up, yes, but-

Taking a deep breath, he pulled himself to his feet for the third time, and palms outstretched, felt the surface of the wall opposite of him. Almost immediately, he noticed something that he didn't notice before. A good chunk of the brick he was touching was missing. Tentatively, he reached inside the hole. Several of his fingers could fit. Maybe…

Using both hands, he pried. The brick jiggled, and yielded away almost instantly. He could just barely glimpse a second surface. Determined now, he pulled at another brick that was near the other one. It came off less easily than the other one had, a pain had awoken in the tips of his fingers, but now he had a goal. He was going to get out.

For one horrifying moment, the image of her face filled his mind. That smile…no, she never smiled like that. Not then. Those sunken cheeks, the bleak, hollow eyes glittering with rage. Flowers. What about flowers? Warning bells rang, drowning out the rest of the memory. The unsafe memory. The thing that wasn't meant to be remembered.

His fingers were bleeding now. Two of his fingernails were cracked in half, and his hands were covered in loose plaster, the foul dust of ages. He was coughing on it as he laboured, panting, sweating, oblivious to the pain.

But what was it? What horrible thing? Why couldn't he remember?

"Mary…Mary…"

The word had become a mantra. Those two syllables fell from his lips over and over again until they became redundant, unrecognizable, no longer the name of his wife but a prayer for salvation.

_FlowerscantbreatheflowerscantbreatheflowersdontwantanycantbreathecantbreathecantBREATTTTTHHHHHEEEEEEEE_

There was a door on the other side.

As he looked upon it, his relief was so great, he momentarily stopped thinking, even though he was still saying her name, saying it between hyperventilated exhalations. The air? He was free. He was…

Horror awaited.

**End**


End file.
